You want a little library? You’ve got to earn it.

Event: Dec 19, 2011

I'm a cute little fuckin' library.

Little Free Library is a precious little project designed to “promote literacy, the love of reading, and building a sense of community” by erecting birdhouse-sized “libraries” where people can steal (“borrow”) or dump (“donate”) books. It’s basically just like the real library, except the selection is worse, there are no computers or homeless people, the books are probably wet from the last rain, and it’s much more susceptible to complete destruction when drunk drivers run into it.

The library pictured above is in a pretty little flower garden in Algiers. The Little Free Library has donated one other little free library (as opposed to those big for-profit libraries that the city runs?) to New Orleans, and has left it up to the city’s denizens to argue over where it should go. They’re accepting essays of 600 words or fewer explaining “Why I want a Little Free Library and what it would do for my neighborhood.”

Entrants should include their name, address, phone number, and email address at the top of the letter.

“Now that the Times-Picayune and the weekly newspapers have cut all but the most perfunctory book coverage, Press Street’s blog, Room 220, is the only place to find serious (and also irreverent) discussion of literature in New Orleans.” — New York Review of Books